President Chen Shui-bian's (
The Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) recent ad in the Liberty Times, the Taipei Times' sister paper, declared that the public have the option to choose independence for Taiwan, unification with China or to maintain the status quo. Although KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
Similarly, when Chen declared that the NUC and the national unification guidelines will cease to function, he also eliminated a preconceived idea, determined for the public by the previous KMT government. This is a manifestation of the democratic spirit. The change is only a recognition of possibilities that may lead to changes in the future -- there is no need for the international community to fret over the matter.
There is certainly a degree of conflict between Chen's announcement that the NUC and the guidelines will cease to function and the "four noes" he outlined in his inauguration speeches in 2000 and 2004, and that hurts his credibility. In both speeches, however, Chen stressed that his promise was made on the condition that China renounce the use of force against Taiwan -- a fact that has often been ignored. As China aims an increasing number of missiles at Taiwan, the premise on which the "four noes" were predicated has ceased to exist. Still, the US and the international community continue to ignore China's ongoing changes to the "status quo," preferring instead to place Taiwan's actions under the microscope. This is entirely unreasonable.
Beijing has frequently criticized Chen's intentions to abolish the NUC and the guidelines, despite doing nothing to achieve the goals they outline: cross-strait exchanges and, eventually, direct links. Instead, Beijing works constantly to isolate Taiwan in the international community, repeatedly blocks its bids to enter the World Health Organization and has passed the "Anti-Secession" Law. These actions cause only resentment in Taiwan -- China has done nothing to bring the two sides closer together. When the Taiwanese government was willing to discuss cross-strait flights and tourism, Beijing refused to negotiate.
In truth, China has never cared about the guidelines, for it wants only unconditional surrender. Taiwan, however, refuses to surrender and has now rejected the unification guidelines, causing China to lose face -- the real source of Beijing's displeasure.
By announcing that the NUC and the guidelines will "cease to function," rather than be "abolished," Chen has tried to achieve a political compromise. The president has moved in the right direction, but the timing is unfortunate. The right time to make the announcement would have been during his 2000 inauguration.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
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